


The Long Way Down

by dendraica



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Short Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 12:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8401198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dendraica/pseuds/dendraica
Summary: Tuff has something to tell Eret. He could use work on the timing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Short Drabble done for the HTTYD Rare Pair Week (http://httydrarepair.tumblr.com/)
> 
> October 28th Prompt: Fall

  
“So, uh, hey. I think I might love you.”

“… WHAT?!”

The look Eret gave the younger man was a fascinating mixture; incredulous, outraged, dumbfounded.

Here they were, knocked off their dragons and hurtling down past clouds to a doubtlessly messy end, and this crazy Berkian had just uttered the most … randomly-timed thing Eret had ever heard in his life.

“No seriously, I do. It’s not even the muscles,” Tuff was saying, quite calmly for someone about to splatter on the rocks below. “But yesterday, you were just ranting to that guy on your ship in - what language was that? From up North? It was beautiful. Even if you _were_ just yelling about tangled up nets.”

He was making doe eyes at him. Eret would have smacked him if he wasn’t so confounded.

"Of all the times to joke around –!”

“Wait, you think I’m joking?!” Tuff’s expression turned into one of dismay. “You think I’d tease about something like this while we’re about to die?!”

“YOU? Quite frankly, YES.”

Berk’s trickster winced. “Fair enough, but I’m not. I just … figured _now_ would be the best time to tell you how I feel, because if you say no or start laughing, it’s not like either of us would have to feel humiliated or awkward for very long, right?”

That sort of made sense, in a strange, yet vaguely sad way. Eret saw something out of the corner of his eye streaking toward them. Their winged calvary?

He glanced again at Tuff, who was watching the fast approaching jagged shoreline with such vulnerable resignation, it sparked something in Eret’s chest.

This was the first time the utterly oblivious rascal had ever returned an ounce of the (apparently too subtle) interest Eret had invested in him, and _of course_ it would take a life-threatening event like this one to make Tuff confess anything close to the truth.

Honestly he was as much annoyed as he was pleased, but then what else could Eret ever have expected - falling for a Loki-worshipping trickster? He reached over and grabbed Tuff by the collar, pulling him closer, just as Skullcrusher swooped beneath them, saving their collective skins.

Eret moved his head, sputtering as wind-blown braids whipped his face. Tuff gathered most them over his shoulder in a tight, nervous grip.

He twisted in the saddle to greet the former trapper with a gaze full of questions he was unsure how to ask - now that they were most likely going to live long enough to have consequences.

Sighing fondly, Eret cupped the back of Tuff’s head, and leaned in to give him his answer.


End file.
